Patrick Hansen.com

Here is a list of travel sites and resources. I’m still deciding which one I prefer, but travel and rates fluctuate so much, that it is still good to compare multiple sites.

I will be posting some other smaller ones soon. I’m personally not a fan of the larger companies and popular vacation packages. I would much rather travel to a small country and camp on a beach, than sit at a lavish resort, with piña coladas, and no adventure. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll drink a cocktail in a lounger any day, but getting to know the people and country that you are visiting cannot really be done poolside.

I was just running some price comparisons for an upcoming flight. This sight brought back awesome results!

http://bookingbuddy.com/

I had it link the search to www.cheapoair.com and it returned results that were hundreds of dollars less than the majority of the other sites, but of course, there are feels, so check those out first!

If you’re lookign for a rental car, Travelocity among others will help you book car rentals without any payment up front. Hotwire.com request payment online and some are non refundable.

Travel & Accomodations
www.priceline.com

www.travelocity.com

www.expedia.com

General Travel:
www.lonelyplanet.com

www.tripadvisor.com

www.gotoday.com

www.kayak.com

www.travelchannel.com

Hotels:
www.hotwire.com

www.hotels.com

Airlines:
www.frontierairlines.com

www.southwest.com

www.united.com

www.hawaiianair.com

www.alohaairlines.com

I have a small Spathiphyllum plant on my desk in the office. It doesn’t require much light nor care. I did however, manage to neglect its low maintenance needs over the past weekend. I was gone for over four days, and even though I did water it on Thursday, the hot weekend and really low light conditions really took its toll. It’s actually not the first time I have done that actually.

The awesome thing is that this plant is so resilient, it has perked back up a couple times now. I was pretty impressed on how quickly it will recoup from the damage once I provide some more light and water.

I took some photos with my iPhone over the course of a work day, and I did not have a tripod to obtain a really nice time lapse, but it did the trick.

So, this is the plant revival in less than 9 hours.

I just finished a design for The March of Dimes Mudd Volleyball 25th Anniversary shirts for this year’s event.

I had to use 2 colors only (orange & brown), since this was a non-profit and they’re on a strict budget. I used some negative space (white – T-shirt color) and lighter percentage of the two colors to give the appearance that there are a few more colors going on here. The lighter shades print through as dithered patterns (small dots) and came out fine. Small text or detailed graphics with a dithered pattern can come out messy and unreadable, so I tried to keep that to a minimum. I used Adobe Illustrator CS3 to create the design and still lovin’ that application. even though I do most of my interface design in Fireworks, AI is still the clear choice for graphics and illustrating.

I must provide a shout out to Vecteezy and their contributing artists, for some of the splatters, as I was on a time crunch and this was volunteer work. Vecteezy is an awesome site to go to for creative and inspiring vector art, design info, and if you’re an artist/designer, you can share your work up there as well. (splatter art pulled from: Grungy vector objects & Gun Series – by Vectoroom.com) I have created my own splatters before, but it was very time consuming, especially prior to Live Trace. So, this time around, I had to grab something quick and there are many talented artists & designers out there who are generous enough to share their talent and skills. THANK YOU!

It’s awesome that there is a community of designers who understand the needs of others, have the passion to create, and get their work out there for others to see and use. It’s similar to an open source community of developers, which has proven to be a huge benefit for all. As I do not consider myself a developer, I’m currently learning Flex, and the examples, tutorials and other tools out there are amazing and extremely helpful. Now it is great to see designers following suit.

This is a great event which helps benefit The March of Dimes continuing fight towards birth defects, premature birth, and infant mortality.

The event allows for friendly volleyball competitions in a few inches of soaking, dirty mud, so you can help a great cause and have some real messy fun. This year’s event is currently sold out, but you can get on the waiting list and hope that a spot opens up. If you can’t make it this year, please plan on it next year and help the fight and get dirty!

Mad props to The March of Dimes and those who organize this event. The 25th year of Mudd Volleyball is bound to be a HIT! Wow, 25 years… that’s almost as old as me.

I just wanted to note, that since my move back in December of 2007, I have had access to recycling receptacles with my normal trash pick up. The trash service has provided the recycling bins with the service.

At first, I was slightly skeptical, but excited to begin participating in more recycling. I thought it was going to be a hassle. I came to realize that it is the easiest thing to do. I have 2 trash bins under my sink, one for normal trash, and the other for recyclable items. The service doesn’t even request that you separate your recyclables, and there is a wide array of items that can be accepted. It doesn’t get easier than that.

I have found out, that I create more recyclable “trash” than non with this system. It is almost a 3:1 ratio, which is awesome. The only bad part is, that it points out how much I have been throwing away these past many years. When I left Seattle, they just implemented a new law, tat if they catch any recyclable items in the trash, you could be penalized and fined. I thought that was slightly ridiculous at the time, but now I see the importance of it and how easy it is to recycle with today’s systems.

What’s with the economy? You call this an economy. The country’s deficit is over 9.1 trillion dollars… that would be this spelled out in digits: $9,100,000,000,000.00. Are you kidding me? Isn’t there a point where you look at this and just say, “Maybe we should spend a little more conservatively?” The National Debt has continued to increase an average of $1.43 billion per day since September 29, 2006! I know this is not the best metaphor, but I spend an average of $20 per day.

brillig.com/debt_clock reports that the estimated population of the United States is 304,151,157, so each citizen’s share of this debt is $30,229.71. (as of today)

I just saw the news this morning and the Dow plummeted 400 points at the opening bell. International markets dropped yesterday from London to China.

Feds took some action before the opening bell by cutting key interest rates by a whole, I mean fractional 3 quarters of a percent! Wow, I’m going to go buy 5 iPhones on my credit card now.

So what does this mean for America? More importantly, what does this mean for the rest of the world, mainly China? Other countries are buying our debt. Some that have bought into it, are thinking about liquidating it, because of how unstable it is. How can a super power be in debt as much as we are?

I gotta go now, but I’ll get back to this. we’ll see how the markets are in a few days.